Skip to main content1. Best abstract show: Terrence La Noue at Butters Gallery
La Noue rips apart his old paintings and slaps their tiny shreds onto new ones. Up close, his latest works resemble the mosaiclike surfaces of Klimt; from afar, with their Miami pinks and greens, they look like blottings from a fountain pen filled with liquid LSD.
2. Best figurative show: Laura Ross-Paul at Froelick
Impeccable technique and Jungian symbolism in the depiction of lanky, shirtless twin brothers: Ross-Paul takes a lesson from Donatello's David and shows what metaphors a master can muster with fresh flesh as inspiration.
3. Best museum exhibit: Embracing the Present: The UBS Paine-Webber Collection, Portland Art Museum
The Gerhard Richter alone is worth the price of admission: an exuberant tantrum of splash, dash and derring-do.
4. Best installation: The Reading Room, Barbara Tetenbaum, Nine Gallery
Navigate your way through a maze of floating plexiglass planes. It's De Stijl in 3-D.
5. Best assemblages: Doughlas Remy, Gallery 33
Remy creates Byzantine shrines out of watch bezels, shot glasses and bicycle reflectors.
6. Most promising unrepresented artist: Katherine Treffinger
The self-taught artist paints luxuriantly textural abstracts, many of which feature a mysterious vertical motif. What is this long, black line? Treffinger ain't talkin'.
7. Most inventive media: Michael Picton's glass-bead and cake-sprinkle sculptures, Mark Woolley
Recipe: Take 20,000 glass beads, pour in a half-million cake sprinkles. Mix with a dash of genius. Do not eat.
8. Best Last Thursday find: Deborah Norby
This bubbly Alberta Street artist makes everything from candles to digital prints, but her monotypes--with their primary colors and jaunty rhythms--stand out as her best work.
9. Best wine and cheese: Belinki & DuPrey Gallery
Gouda, havarti, merlot--oh my!
10. Best party: PICA's "Endless Summer" soiree
Even though the Dada Ball went the way of the dodo bird, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art did us proud with this shindig, a Cosmo-fueled parade of couture, installation art and a camcorder-equipped tortoise.
WWeek 2015